111–120 of 121 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, pirates were not cool. The rest of the list though...
> The rest of the list though... Please read some unbiased history books. Catholics: Copernicus, Mendel, Pascal, Ampere, Fermat, ... And The Renaissance is always skipped by them for some reason. Figures like Napoleon or The Catholic Monarchs were cowards and stupid? But I think I'm wasting my time answering you. You seem quite closed minded, blue team, read team.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Polytheism is likely flawed as an organizational concept because it's clear that gods were creations of man. Monotheism flips it and makes God the master of the universe while man struggles to understand the nature of God. I don’t think that’s true of polytheism at all. That the gods aren’t everywhere or all-powerful doesn’t mean they were invented by the local humans, just that they were discovered by them. They j…
> I’m not sure what it means to be “flawed as an organizational concept.” States that had polytheistic religions as the main one stuck around for a long time of course. It is hard to say what’s predictive and what’s a coincidence in history I guess. Romans would have had to integrate and work with many pantheons due to the reach of their empire. Obviously they were cool with the Greek gods for the most part, but what…
The ACOUP guy did a nice series about polytheism [ https://acoup.blog/2019/10/25/collections-practical-polythei... ]. An observation that stuck with me is that polytheist people (at least where he studied) were less focused on Orthodoxy, and more on Orthopraxy. If you have a give-and-take relationship with the gods (instead of one where the God frequently checks what you are actually are thinking inside your head and nothing is truly transactional), I wonder if you are more willing to go along with Egyptian rituals while you are in Egypt. Apparently Apollo is fine with the Egyptian rituals. In Egypt at least.
Well, you probably will be ok with doing an Egyptian farming ritual. I guess if you are a Roman, you probably are pretty confident that the gods are receptive to your pre-battle rituals, given their track record.
Anyway, if your Roman ritual was just something that your ancestors discovered through trial and error, I guess you probably won’t be too freaked out by the fact that the Egyptians’ ancestors found a different ritual. The gods are mysterious and temperamental, after all.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, pirates were not cool. The rest of the list though...
> The rest of the list though... Please read some unbiased history books. Catholics: Copernicus, Mendel, Pascal, Ampere, Fermat, ... And The Renaissance is always skipped by them for some reason. Figures like Napoleon or The Catholic Monarchs were cowards and stupid? But I think I'm wasting my time answering you. You seem quite closed minded, blue team, read team.
As to your last point, i view myself largely as an unaffected observer, who likes to poke holes in certain liberal narratives.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’m not sure what it means to be “flawed as an organizational concept.” States that had polytheistic religions as the main one stuck around for a long time of course. It is hard to say what’s predictive and what’s a coincidence in history I guess. Romans would have had to integrate and work with many pantheons due to the reach of their empire. Obviously they were cool with the Greek gods for the most part, but what…
I don’t think they fully merged their pantheons as a logical exercise. I suspect the problem of why (from the Romans point of view) the Egyptians made different observations could be resolved in various ways; depending on how multiculturalist the Roman was, he could understand the Egyptians as being just, like, wrong about everything, or he could interpret their beliefs as observations of some other aspect of Apollo.…
Yeah, I don't mean 'Merging of Pantheons' as much as how different religions interact. When I speak to Hindus about Jesus (and when they speak to me about Vishnu) we aren't really adopting each other's gods, but instead trying to find pleasantries and similarities between our ways of thought.
I also have come to the opinion that Vishnu in Hinduism adds a weird case of Monotheism in an otherwise Polytheistic religion. (Same with Buddha in Buddhism).
Shintoism might be the only religion that's classically polytheistic, and only because Japan was isolated for so long.
The Monotheistic argument of an Ultimate God above all others (be it Vishnu, Buddha or Jesus) is something that virtually all mainstream religions have today. This cannot be a coincidence.
-------
But yes. Applying history to historical theologies/polythists is probably a better idea than me applying modern religious concepts and pretending that people a thousand years ago had similar conversations as me and my Hindi friend. Lol. But my knowledge of the Romans and Egyptions is not quite as deep as the blog you listed there.
> Anyway, if your Roman ritual was just something that your ancestors discovered through trial and error, I guess you probably won’t be too freaked out by the fact that the Egyptians’ ancestors found a different ritual. The gods are mysterious and temperamental, after all.
Well sure. That's an argument for how polytheists talk with other polytheists.
The issue is when the Romans talks with the proto-Monotheists. The Hewbrews, Zoroastrianism, the Gnostics and the Catholics. At this point, the idea of 'God above all other Gods' is taking root.
It may take centuries before the discussion plays out, but it's started. Maybe in another universe we'd all be Zoroastrianists instead of Catholic, but it feels like the inevitable march towards a God above all gods when you have so many monotheistic religions popping up.
Besides, worship of just one god sounds a lot easier than trying to memorize the long lists of Helios / Apollo / Ra / Amaterasu (sun gods) and hoping your rituals are keeping them appeased.
As a practical manner, if you were going to try out a new Religion, it only makes sense to try out the most powerful ones. Be it El, YHWH, Jesus, Vishnu, Buddha, Zoroaster, the Gnostics 'Supreme Being's or whatever. That's the benefit of Monotheism.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Baal was at least also the son of El in Canaanite religion which predated an Israeli kingdom Where are you getting this from?
The Wikipedia article is a good place to start: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal Like all matters concerning the gods in the ancient near east, it's complex, and every answer has to be qualified. So apparently in some traditions, Baal was the son of Dagan (another fertility god), and in some the son of El (the head of the Canaanite pantheon, often identified with Yahweh even by orthodox Yahwists).
This seems totally unsurprising, given that the Old Testament freely uses both terms while insisting there is only one god. What else are orthodox Yahwists supposed to think?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. Well, only one of those is the name of a god. El is just the ordinary word "god". Ba'al is the ordinary word "lord". Unlike El, this could theoretically double as the name of a god in a couple of ways. In the typical case it didn't, and gods addressed as Ba'al had names beyond the title. Compare "Ba'al Hadad", where the god'…
El was the great God and Father of all gods, YHWH was his son [1]. The meaning of the word "El" changed over time and by the time most of the Bible was written it did simply mean God. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_%28deity%29?wprov=sfla1
That is not correct; the word simply meant "god" long, long before there is any attestation of a god that might use it as a name.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> El, YHWH, and Baal were all different deities merged into one as the people groups unified. How does this theory account for the overt hostility to Baal et al. in the Bible?
"Baal" was less a name than a title. In modern Hebrew, it just means "lord" or "husband". It was also apparently a title that could, at some stages of Israel's history, even be applied to YHWH, much like "Adonay" ("My lord"). For instance, the individuals named "Mephibosheth" and "Ish-bosheth" (two of the sons of Saul, a clear if imperfect Yahwist) were originally named "Meribaal" and "Ish-baal". Whoever put together…
And God spake all these words, saying, I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
"Thou shalt have no other gods before me." not "There are no gods but me". The original word translated as "before" is "עַל", literally "above", "over", "upon". That's not denying the other gods exist, it's forbidding the tribes of Israel from worshiping them or treating them as greater than YHVH. Modern doctrine insists that other gods aren't real, but that's not directly supported in the torah.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why are the European "Dark Ages" considered a misnomer? https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/235w3l/why_a...
I wouldn't pay too much attention to answers from this respectable subreddit when they express more what is a historiographic opinion than a fact. And when at the same time they are fighting strawmen. The European Dark Ages narrative was indeed overblown and needed correction. But this correction went too far. It seems to be now at the stage of explicit and vigorous denial of any downfall of fortune in the Western ex…
Regardless, your link is an interesting argument that doesn't provide anything especially compelling to the contrary .. a void, here a void in the record, is easily filled with speculation.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>You can see a historic parallel to how that played out with the formation of the Roman pantheon. Mostly stolen stories and ideas from the Greek pantheon tweeked to fit the empire. You also have to think in the opposite direction, how did these gods all come about. Every person will have their own at list slightly different understanding and memory of the stories and rituals. Go to the next village over and everythin…
Iron Man (Earth-626), Iron Man (Earth-25519), Iron Man (Earth 42069 Prime)
This is no different from the concern in modern American law with whether a public official takes some action in his private capacity or officially in his public capacity. Gods have no private capacity, but the major ones have many, many different public capacities.
(The actual term for this is "aspect"; we would say something like "Zeus in his aspect as Zeus Apomyios".)